Inside
So the internal structure really consists of two sections. The rear of the case has a bracket for the power supply and then the rest of the case is based on a thick motherboard tray. That same tray also handles all of the storage and cooling as well. Much like the exterior of the D-Frame Mini, the inside is still fairly flexible; there isn’t any one specific way to build inside of it. You are however limited to a Mini-ITX motherboard. This isn’t a huge surprise to me, actually I prefer ITX builds, but the size of the D-Frame Mini does seem more like a Micro-ATX case given its size. The In Win 901 felt the same way, I have a feeling as we dig into the D-Frame Mini I will find a little room that could have made things smaller. This isn’t something you think about with Micro-ATX and ATX builds because size isn’t an issue with them, but when you are building with mini ITX there is an expectation that you are building a small PC.
Up in the top right corner In Win gives you three hard drive racks. Each rack mounts to the motherboard tray using two spring loaded screws. The motherboard tray has a cutout for power and SATA cables on each. The trays themselves have mounting holes for both 3.5 inch and 2.5 drives, both mounting from the underside of the tray. This design is really cool, the drives almost just float out of nowhere. To make remounting the trays to the motherboard tray, In Win did include two small nubs on each tray to help line them up before reattaching. In addition to the three 2.5/3.5 drive mounts, there are two mounting locations on the motherboard tray itself just above the fan bracket.
Down on the bottom is the entirety of the cooling on the D-Frame Mini. Two fans mount in the included bracket to blow cool air over the motherboard and keep everything cool. The design also means the D-Frame Mini supports a full 240mm radiator and water-cooling, the original larger D-Frame didn’t officially support water cooling at all, so this is a nice improvement over the original design.
The power supply cage at the rear of the case is also unique. It is designed in a way that allows you to mount your power supply both up or down depending on what you are going for with the build. The cage supports up to 220mm power supplies although I doubt you will really need that much space. This design does mean that you should be able to hide some of your cabling inside of the cage, but I will look into that when building our LAN rig later in this article.
The motherboard tray in the D-Frame Mini is interesting as well. Take a look at the photo of the holes for the hard drives, In Win used an extremely thick piece of billet aluminum, this one piece alone wasn’t cheap to make. Them machining all of the edges was also a nice touch that prevents any scratches and cuts when installing everything, not to mention it looks a little more polished. The panel itself seems to be covered in a flat black material. I’ll be honest I can’t tell really if it is a powder coated finish or what. It almost feels like a matt vinyl, but I wasn’t able to pick at it and pull any edges so I might be barking up the wrong tree there.
With the D-Frame Mini, part of what is interesting is what you don’t see. On top of their being no traditional case panels, they also don’t include a rear I/O hole. Just like the 901 there is just an open area where your rear panel faces out. I guess in a way it makes sense, why put a rear I/O panel on a case that is otherwise open but for some it is nice to have the panel for identifying some of the plugs or in my case making sure I don’t miss the hole. What they do include is a support bracket with two PCI slots built into it; this should help support any video card you toss in the case. Speaking of you can fit up to a 340mm long video card in the D-Frame Mini, more than enough space for anything you need.
